COVENANT d Forces Community Covenant
year; usually a few weeks before the main meeting. I draft the agenda, present papers for discussion, take and publish meeting minutes and often speak on many of the agenda items.
For the first year I was quite keen to see some practical activity at each military station, whilst also promoting that we had a Community Covenant. The board meetings initially were a ‘getting to know you’ opportunity. However, I’ve always been conscious of trying to have something interesting for everybody, so when we are talking about veterans’ issues, the serving military also feel part of that conversation.
At RAF Honington we supported an Outdoor Activities Weekend at a local outdoor education centre, some 5 miles away. This was to be targeted at RAF Regiment dads returning from Afghanistan and for it to be a fun, family re-bonding opportunity. The Welfare Team promoted it on station and take up was quite good. Feedback from the children that participated proved really positive. Introducing new community services to military welfare teams has been a quick win as many are already paid for or
heavily subsidised. A really good example is our local Community Learning service; the welfare team looked at the courses on offer and proposed a Managing Stress workshop for married couples from RAF Families. This happened twice, and these 2-3 hour workshops were really insightful in helping understand family dynamics of servicemen and women returning from operations to their spouses. Feedback was more positive than was expected – best summarised as: ‘it’s good to talk’ and a reassurance that ‘our issues are really typical of other married couples in the same situation’. More recently, following a Community Covenant grant to a local Environmental Education charity, children from RAF families participated in an Eco Discovery Learning Day. They were joined by children from the local area and was a result of the RAF opening its youth club services to children from the local civil community. This is a great example of the military engaging its civil community.
During this year, each local authority that had signed the Community Covenant were asked to appoint an Armed Forces Champion (councillor and senior officer); this certainly helps me as I’m a council officer
and can’t really pull rank on council officers or managers in other organisations so these designated contacts should help navigate and influence activity and understanding.
There is still a lot of understanding of the military community that needs to be done. The recently published RAF Families Federation ‘RAF Life’ leaflet, will no doubt help and local authorities and statutory services need to be reminded of the Armed Forces Covenant and Community Covenant. A major piece of communication is the launch this summer of our dedicated Armed Forces Community Covenant website
suffolkmilitarycovenant.org.uk – the second dedicated website in the UK I’m informed.
Finally, I organised and secured funding for a Suffolk Veterans’ Health and Information Event just three weeks ago, at time of writing. It really is amazing what support, advice and guidance there is available to serving military, their families and Veterans and their families. I’d like to sign-off by highlighting that the Military Welfare Service is a fantastic asset for any community; please value it and contribute to it as there’s nothing comparable in civvy street.
www.raf-ff.org.uk
Envoy Spring 2015
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